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The Boomer Century, 1946-2046: How America's Most Influential Generation Changed Everything
The Baby Boom generation has always been known as
a demographic anomaly and these 77 million Americans
have dominated our society for the past 60 years, setting
trends and revolutionizing entire industries. They didn't
just date, they transformed sex roles and practices. They
didn't just go to the doctor, they reinvented healthcare.
And now retirement and aging will never be the same
as the oldest boomers move into their 60s with no
thoughts of traditional retirement or old-age homes!
Featuring insightful interviews and essays from Baby
Boomers like Dr. Andrew Weill, Erica Jong, Eve Ensler,
Rob Reiner, Oliver Stone, Lester Thurow, and Tony
Snow, THE BOOMER CENTURY is an entertaining,
historical and cultural look at a truly amazing generation.
a demographic anomaly and these 77 million Americans
have dominated our society for the past 60 years, setting
trends and revolutionizing entire industries. They didn't
just date, they transformed sex roles and practices. They
didn't just go to the doctor, they reinvented healthcare.
And now retirement and aging will never be the same
as the oldest boomers move into their 60s with no
thoughts of traditional retirement or old-age homes!
Featuring insightful interviews and essays from Baby
Boomers like Dr. Andrew Weill, Erica Jong, Eve Ensler,
Rob Reiner, Oliver Stone, Lester Thurow, and Tony
Snow, THE BOOMER CENTURY is an entertaining,
historical and cultural look at a truly amazing generation.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published April 30, 2007
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26 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
May 1, 2012
The book admits at the beginning that it's hard to generalize people who were born over an 18 year time span, and then proceeds to generalize them. The author makes claims about how Baby Boomers are not the Me Generation, but then goes on to claim that his generation is the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of mankind. I might have considered this to be an interesting overview of the time line of American history from 1946 to the present, except that I'm right in the middle of studying a bunch of more comprehensive sources of that same time.
This book was published in 2007, right before this most recent recession. That stands out especially when the author brings up the economy. One of the experts interviewed for the book was claiming that it was good for the economy that Baby Boomers were the first to embrace significant consumer debt. I think I can safely disagree with that view.
This book was published in 2007, right before this most recent recession. That stands out especially when the author brings up the economy. One of the experts interviewed for the book was claiming that it was good for the economy that Baby Boomers were the first to embrace significant consumer debt. I think I can safely disagree with that view.
July 9, 2010
" . . . going to radically redo aging . . . what it means to be 60 . . . just warming up for the big game" (book jacket)
Having just turned 60, I *like* this idea!
There is also a companion PBS television documentary by the same name.
"So then, when are we old? . . . when we THINK we're old"
Former President Jimmy Carter from _The Virtues of Aging_.
Having just turned 60, I *like* this idea!
There is also a companion PBS television documentary by the same name.
"So then, when are we old? . . . when we THINK we're old"
Former President Jimmy Carter from _The Virtues of Aging_.
December 3, 2023
Interesting, but I didn't really enjoy the way it was written and it's very out of date because it was written in 2007. Therefore, it couldn't take into account the Obama and Trump administrations, the Great Recession, the Affordable Care Act, and the pandemic. I'd be curious to read a current version of the book, but it would be hard to crystallize the broader experience while we're still in the midst of turmoil.
March 30, 2024
There's a certain portion of the Baby Boom generation that is very much in love with talking about how mythically great it is. That is the portion of the Baby Boom generation that wrote this book. Thus, while this book contains a fascinating amount of true information regarding the history of that generation and the events that they went through (as well as characteristics such as their legendary sense of entitlement), it is also very problematic in its presentation, especially in its tendency to blend true fact with half-remembered experience and outright idealized myth. In so doing, it is setting a dangerous precedent for how we "officially" remember a generation that's still going to be with us for another 20 or 30 years at least, and for how that generation "officially" remembers itself. There are some very good sidebar essays in here about political partisanship from the likes of David Gergen and Lewis Black, but the more interesting and trenchant observations in the text itself, such as the fact that our society has become one that does not value experience and this is difficult for many Boomers to comprehend, are often lost in a jumble of other, less valid ideas. It's a very stream-of-consciousness approach that yields some good information, but mostly yields nothing relevant except for self-indulgent Peter Pan nostalgia on the part of the Boomer elite.
It is also problematic in its format: choosing one celebrity each to "represent" each different social movement of the 1960's and 70's and having this "panel" offer its "insight" into various aspects of being a Boomer, etc., rather than consulting actual experts. The problem with this approach is that it overwhelmingly reflects the latent cultural biases of the authors: with the exception of the token "approachable" black woman to represent "civil rights" and Eve Ensler to represent "implicitly crazy feminists", nearly everyone else on the "panel" is an affluent white man representing the "affluent white man" version of late 20th century history that was en vogue in the Clinton and Dubya eras when this book was written.
There's also no coverage of the well-established sociological differentiation between "early Boomers" (born as early as 1946) and "late Boomers" (born as late as 1964). This ends up being a huge problem, because the authors have created a world in which the only Baby Boomer experience is that of an affluent white man born before 1955: getting to go to college, bum around for a while in the late 60's, and then get a job in their 30's and be automatically set for life because they had a bachelor's degree. This describes a tiny percentage of a huge generation, yet is pushed as the "only" Boomer experience. There were way more Baby Boomers who never got to go to college, or who had to go to Vietnam, or who had to struggle for jobs in the early 70's. That silent majority is barely acknowledged by this book, and on the rare occasions when it is, it's only an aside. Similarly, someone born in 1964 is still a Boomer, but would have been too young to recall much about the late 60's, and would have missed JFK completely; that person is also not acknowledged at all. Instead of aiming for depth and honesty, this book idealizes the already-idealized sixties mythology of a handful of rich white idealists (both liberal and conservative) and creates a muddled mess of conflicting opinions that produce nothing less than total confusion and gridlock and that bears no resemblance to the actual needs of the majority of their generation.
And that's the rub: what this book really gave me more than anything is a sense that American Baby Boomers are easily the most confused and divided generation in human history in a way that is literally dooming the rest of the planet, because the ones with power can't get over themselves. Even this book aptly points out that the Baby Boomers could have been the most powerful political force in human history if they'd united, but instead they've been tearing each other apart over the culture wars and various other petty things that happened 50 years ago. Speaking as a Millennial, I don't have much patience for that self-indulgent backwards-looking narcissism when I have bills to pay and a family of my own to start.
Ultimately, despite having its interesting moments, this book just contributes to that overly-glutted genre of self-righteous justification of one particular kind of affluent older Baby Boomer that would do the world a favor by shutting the hell up for the first time in 40 years and letting the younger generations speak, for once. It will never happen, but the world desperately needs it to.
It is also problematic in its format: choosing one celebrity each to "represent" each different social movement of the 1960's and 70's and having this "panel" offer its "insight" into various aspects of being a Boomer, etc., rather than consulting actual experts. The problem with this approach is that it overwhelmingly reflects the latent cultural biases of the authors: with the exception of the token "approachable" black woman to represent "civil rights" and Eve Ensler to represent "implicitly crazy feminists", nearly everyone else on the "panel" is an affluent white man representing the "affluent white man" version of late 20th century history that was en vogue in the Clinton and Dubya eras when this book was written.
There's also no coverage of the well-established sociological differentiation between "early Boomers" (born as early as 1946) and "late Boomers" (born as late as 1964). This ends up being a huge problem, because the authors have created a world in which the only Baby Boomer experience is that of an affluent white man born before 1955: getting to go to college, bum around for a while in the late 60's, and then get a job in their 30's and be automatically set for life because they had a bachelor's degree. This describes a tiny percentage of a huge generation, yet is pushed as the "only" Boomer experience. There were way more Baby Boomers who never got to go to college, or who had to go to Vietnam, or who had to struggle for jobs in the early 70's. That silent majority is barely acknowledged by this book, and on the rare occasions when it is, it's only an aside. Similarly, someone born in 1964 is still a Boomer, but would have been too young to recall much about the late 60's, and would have missed JFK completely; that person is also not acknowledged at all. Instead of aiming for depth and honesty, this book idealizes the already-idealized sixties mythology of a handful of rich white idealists (both liberal and conservative) and creates a muddled mess of conflicting opinions that produce nothing less than total confusion and gridlock and that bears no resemblance to the actual needs of the majority of their generation.
And that's the rub: what this book really gave me more than anything is a sense that American Baby Boomers are easily the most confused and divided generation in human history in a way that is literally dooming the rest of the planet, because the ones with power can't get over themselves. Even this book aptly points out that the Baby Boomers could have been the most powerful political force in human history if they'd united, but instead they've been tearing each other apart over the culture wars and various other petty things that happened 50 years ago. Speaking as a Millennial, I don't have much patience for that self-indulgent backwards-looking narcissism when I have bills to pay and a family of my own to start.
Ultimately, despite having its interesting moments, this book just contributes to that overly-glutted genre of self-righteous justification of one particular kind of affluent older Baby Boomer that would do the world a favor by shutting the hell up for the first time in 40 years and letting the younger generations speak, for once. It will never happen, but the world desperately needs it to.
October 23, 2007
truly some fascuinating insights for those of us in the boomer generation or dealing wit someone in the boomer generation
September 9, 2025
Book is a good introduction to the Baby Boomer generation. They are the most important generation to ever exist and get an understanding of how they grew up and the lives they lived are important to understanding the world we live in today.
August 9, 2020
I'm excited to learn that we still have so much potential to continue shaping the change that we started on our journey. As the Carpenters said so many years ago, "We've Only Just Begun."
July 6, 2022
How interesting, to read predictions from 15 years ago-- some very true, and some blindsided by recent medical, financial and political curve balls.
November 8, 2015
Very boomer-centric POV. Highly entertaining read until about page 200, where it becomes an anxiously-written bellowing about fears of aging and frankly becomes a chore to finish.
Very detailed and interesting, though highly biased. At times the author points out awareness of such hypocracy, such as by acknowledging the fact that the boomer generation is the loudest "me" generation, but then such hypocracy is immediately forgotten and replaced by a soothing pat on the back (i.e. ensuring the reader that the boomers didn't wreck the economy by bracing an essentially permanent state of debt, when in fact our country's debt on a personal AND federal level continue to spiral dangerously out of control).
During certain chapters, I think Mr. Croker likely started drinking too much coffee, as evidenced by the exponential increase in frequency of declarative statements punctuated by an exclamation mark. This trend seems to begin around page 50, and rather humorously progresses in an apparent bell-curve, peaking at about page 180 or so, where it again begins to decline.
Starts as a fun, funny, and informative read, then suddenly becomes a rather strange book. I'd cut it at the chapter "When I'm 64" and just delete the rest. The vast majority of the end is basically a barrage of hopeful ruminations on the implications of various pseudo-scientific research.
Still worth a skim at the very least.
Very detailed and interesting, though highly biased. At times the author points out awareness of such hypocracy, such as by acknowledging the fact that the boomer generation is the loudest "me" generation, but then such hypocracy is immediately forgotten and replaced by a soothing pat on the back (i.e. ensuring the reader that the boomers didn't wreck the economy by bracing an essentially permanent state of debt, when in fact our country's debt on a personal AND federal level continue to spiral dangerously out of control).
During certain chapters, I think Mr. Croker likely started drinking too much coffee, as evidenced by the exponential increase in frequency of declarative statements punctuated by an exclamation mark. This trend seems to begin around page 50, and rather humorously progresses in an apparent bell-curve, peaking at about page 180 or so, where it again begins to decline.
Starts as a fun, funny, and informative read, then suddenly becomes a rather strange book. I'd cut it at the chapter "When I'm 64" and just delete the rest. The vast majority of the end is basically a barrage of hopeful ruminations on the implications of various pseudo-scientific research.
Still worth a skim at the very least.
September 25, 2012
This book started out with potential and I was excited to dig into the Boomer Generation, however found it lacking on many levels.
Maybe because I'm one of the last boomers, maybe because it didn't go into what I wanted to read, or maybe because it was biased and narrow with only the author's opinions. Afterall, a writer can only tell us what they know.
Hummm...will use it as a resource and found some nuggets to expand on in my stories but can't recommend it to anyone specific.
Thanks for the effort and for scratching the surface. Obviously, there is so much more to our generation.
Maybe because I'm one of the last boomers, maybe because it didn't go into what I wanted to read, or maybe because it was biased and narrow with only the author's opinions. Afterall, a writer can only tell us what they know.
Hummm...will use it as a resource and found some nuggets to expand on in my stories but can't recommend it to anyone specific.
Thanks for the effort and for scratching the surface. Obviously, there is so much more to our generation.
January 11, 2014
This book was a great high level overview of what is aptly called the Boomer Century - the approximate period of time that we boomers will be around, from the first to the last of us. It kept my interest all the way through, and I liked the variety of topics covered. It was a also a nice touch that the author brought in various subject matter experts.
June 26, 2013
very interesting...esp if you are a boomer!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews